This invention relates in general to vehicle wheels and in particular to an improved apparatus for use in producing a vehicle wheel.
A conventional vehicle wheel is typically of a two-piece construction and includes an inner wheel disc and an outer xe2x80x9cfullxe2x80x9d wheel rim. The wheel disc can be cast, forged, or fabricated from steel, aluminum, or other alloys, and includes an inner annular wheel mounting portion and an outer annular portion. The wheel mounting portion of the wheel disc defines an inboard mounting surface and includes a center pilot or hub hole, and a plurality of lug receiving holes formed therethrough for mounting the vehicle wheel to an axle of the vehicle. The wheel rim is fabricated from steel, aluminum, or other alloys, and includes an inboard tire bead seat retaining flange, an inboard tire bead seat, an axially extending well, an outboard tire bead seat, and an outboard tire bead seat retaining flange. In some instances, a three-piece wheel construction having a mounting cup secured to the wheel disc is used. In both types of constructions, the outer annular portion of the wheel disc is secured to the wheel rim by a weld.
A full face wheel is distinguished from other types of wheels by having a one-piece wheel disc construction. In particular, the full face wheel includes a xe2x80x9cfull facexe2x80x9d disc and a xe2x80x9cpartialxe2x80x9d rim. The full face disc can be formed cast, forged, or fabricated from steel, aluminum, or other alloys. The full face disc includes an inner annular wheel mounting portion and an outer annular portion which defines at least a portion of an outboard tire bead seat retaining flange of the wheel. The wheel mounting portion defines an inboard mounting surface and includes a center pilot or hub hole, and a plurality of lug receiving holes formed therethrough for mounting the wheel to an axle of the vehicle. The partial rim is fabricated from steel, aluminum, or other alloys, and includes an inboard tire bead seat retaining flange, an inboard tire bead seat, an axially extending well, and an outboard tire bead seat. In some instances, the outboard tire bead seat of the rim and the outer annular portion of the disc cooperate to form the outboard tire bead seat retaining flange of the full face wheel. In both types of constructions, the outboard tire bead seat of the rim is positioned adjacent the outer annular portion of the disc and a weld is applied to secure the rim and the disc together.
In the above wheel constructions, the wheel is produced on an assembly line. The assembly line includes a number of wheel assembly tooling stations where certain operations are performed in order to assemble and produce the finished vehicle wheel. The time required to perform a desired operation at one station may not be the same as that at another station. As a result of this, a typical wheel assembly line includes one or more xe2x80x9cidlexe2x80x9d tooling stations in the wheel assembly line between the xe2x80x9coperationalxe2x80x9d stations to accommodate for these time differences or for other reasons not related to time.
The idle station tooling members in a wheel assembly line are designed for a particular vehicle wheel configuration, such as the size of the wheel or the shape of the wheel. If a xe2x80x9cdifferentxe2x80x9d wheel is to be run on the wheel assembly line, the idle tooling stations need to be changed to accommodate for this different wheel. One way to change the idle station tooling for a new wheel is to remove and replace many of the individual idle station tooling members specifically designed for that particular wheel. This is a time consuming process resulting in down time on the wheel assembly line. It is also known to remove all of the idle station tooling members as a unit and replace them with another unit with tooling members for the particular wheel to be run. For this to be possible, each wheel configuration and each idle tooling station have to have a dedicated set of tooling for a particular wheel. In both of the above changeovers, several bolts have to be removed and then reinstalled using tools sized for the bolts.
This invention relates to an improved vehicle wheel idle station tooling apparatus. The vehicle wheel idle station tooling apparatus includes a center pilot and at least one rim block. The center pilot is adapted to be secured to a component of the vehicle wheel idle station tooling apparatus and defines an outer diameter which is slightly less than an inner diameter defined by a pilot hole of a vehicle wheel so as to pilot the vehicle wheel on the center pilot. The rim block is adapted to be secured to a component of the vehicle wheel idle station tooling apparatus and includes a surface which is operative to engage an outer surface of a flange of the vehicle wheel so as to support the vehicle wheel thereon. At least one of the center pilot and the rim block is releasably secured to the component by a quick release pin which enables said at least one of said center pilot and said rim block to be removed and replaced with a different sized component by a manual hand-operated manipulation of the quick release pin without resort to the utilization of a tool.